Topics created by Diego_BioSteam

I’ve worked in PR and communication for the last five years - some of that time in scientific communications. If you google “Drawn to Science” you will find some of my work ;-)
I respectfully disagree with the statistics on the reduction of the attention span - not that they are false (though I am not sure how you can measure that reliably), but they are misleading. The key word is “average”. While content is constantly increasing, time -as we all know- is a finite and non-stretchable quantity. The result is that - on average- each piece of content will receive less time. That’s as obvious as warm water and doesn’t mean much.
The good, interesting, engaging content will still be read/seen and people will spend time with it. Otherwise nobody would watch good movies or read books anymore ;-))
Due the mass of content, however, the competition for attention is fierce, and the quality of the content becomes more important than ever before.
And that, of course, applies to artists as to any other content creator...

Very interesting—I didn’t make it through the whole article but found the ideas thought provoking. To me, one important aspect of the topic is the importance of respecting our audience as creators. They may be children, but they aren’t stupid. They are as intelligent as an adult, but also less experienced. Creating with respect for an intelligent audience is important, no matter their age.

I say exactly the same as Pamela. It's encouraging to know that there's still some room for traditional art.
It would be fun to try the digital tools if I had the means, but both money and technological flair is on the bottom with me. Heck, even my phone is still a cuboid!
I think I'm really lucky that my interest is children's books. That industry seems to still be very open to traditional art. It is of course very likely that it will be outphased even there, as everywhere else. But as for right now, I'm not particularly worried about it.

I'm currently an engineering student taking up Civil Engineering and I'll be graduating this March 2018. I never really imagined getting into engineering but because of a rebellious streak during my freshman year, I took up engineering as some sort of "screw you" to my mother and to everyone who doubted me. I did very well at the start. I got straight As and I was top of my class. However, as the years dragged on, I slowly lost my interest in my degree. I started skipping my classes. My grades started to drop, I fell into a deep depression and all I wanted was to get away from it all. It was then that I realized that all I wanted to do was art.

Before college, I always wanted to study Animation but because of my mother's objections, I decided not to. They convinced me that doing art isn't a viable career. Instead, they wanted me to get into Education (not that there's anything wrong with that). However, there was this part of me that thought: "I really don't care! I don't care if I'll be poor! I All I want to do is ART." I guess that's why rebelled and got into engineering.

So what's my take on this? If I had the chance, would I change any of it? No. Engineering made me realize what I hated and what I really wanted in life. It made me realize that art is the one path for me. Did it help me with my art? No. It enabled me to grow into a more well-rounded person though.

Would I recommend it to others? No. I highly oppose it. Taking up engineering wasted my time and money, valuable resources I could have put into art school and advance my skills by leagues compared to my current level. If I was able to realize this earlier and stick to my guns, it would've been a whole lot better.

So for those of you out there who are still on the fence on whether you should focus on your art and maybe go to an art school or take another course, go the art route. You will not regret it.

However, if you're worried about your financial future if you become an artist, perhaps you'll do better with another degree and by the end of the day, ask yourself if that course is still something you can see yourself growing old doing. Maybe you'll love it and decide to go with it. Or maybe you'll realize that you don't--- just like me. Be warned though, it will not be pretty. I only stuck with engineering because it would be such a waste to quit just a few months before graduation.

I am glad I could present some points to help you think more about the career!

I don't think the company will decide whether it is a entry level job or advanced level. They will offer that price and it's up to the artist to take it or not. Usually a seasoned artist with 5 or 10 years of experience will be able to say no to such offers (or maybe not even waste time looking for them).

It ends up on the hands of artists starting their careers. We know some starting artists may be quite good in terms of artistic skills and they may think this is a great opportunity. Or maybe, some of these starting artists are just desperately needing money and they accept the offer.

As for the quality of the materials for analog art, I agree that better quality materials have an effect on the quality of the creation, but I mean that a good artist can use a 2 dollars sketchbook and a 10 dollars watercolour set and make a piece that is much better compared to a bad artist that invested on high quality materials. So, I believe the beginner artist should invest on becoming a good artist. The seasoned good professional artist is making money to be able to afford good quality material in case the work he is being paid for requires higher quality material (or maybe he just want to have fun with new materials :P )

P.s.: just a detail... I used the term "analog art" instead of "traditional art" because I think the term traditional is very misused. I think even in digital art, there are techniques and processes that are not used anymore and are therefore "traditional". For example, nowadays in 3D computer graphics its very common to create characters by doing digital sculpting (high polygonal sculpting) while in the past it was done by basic geometry modeling (low polygonal modeling). So, the low-poly modeling can be considered a traditional way to do 3D digital art. Or even in non digital art, someone can be using a new technique that was never used before - I think using high tech machines to cut metal to make a sculpture is a very "non-traditional" way to do sculpture, which is not digital at all.